T-Mobile CEO John Legere has published an open letter on the company’s website, and it smells like an attempt at damage control after getting some real backlash. As you might know, he’s been making good use of his colorful vocabulary to defend his company over accusations that it’s throttling YouTube videos these past few weeks. In the process, he lambasted Google and accused the Electronic Frontier Foundation of being a paid mouthpiece. In the surprisingly expletive-free missive, he claims that Binge On is a “VERY ‘pro’ net neutrality capability, ” because you can switch it on or off whenever you want. The T-Mobile uncarrier feature allows you to stream 480p videos without eating up your data, but it can only do so for specific services like Netflix. That doesn’t sit well with net neutrality advocates who believe that it makes certain apps more appealing than others. The FCC cited that as one of its reasons when it summoned the company to talk about its data exemption scheme in December. Legere also apologizes to the EFF for posting a video asking “who the fuck” the organization is and who’s paying it. His response was triggered by the non-profit digital rights group’s question on Twitter, asking if Binge On alters the video stream in any way or limits its bandwidth: Look, by now you know that I am a vocal, animated and sometimes foul mouthed CEO. I don’t filter myself and you know that no one at T-Mobile filters me either (no, they don’t even try). That means I will sometimes incite a bit of a ‘social media riot’, but I’m not going to apologize for that. I will however apologize for offending EFF and its supporters. Just because we don’t completely agree on all aspects of Binge On doesn’t mean I don’t see how they fight for consumers. We both agree that it is important to protect consumers’ rights and to give consumers value. We have that in common, so more power to them. As I mentioned last week, we look forward to sitting down and talking with the EFF and that is a step we will definitely take. While we may never know why the CEO suddenly decided to publish this letter, he said he decided to write it up for the sake of the data exemption feature: Unfortunately, my color commentary from last week is now drowning out the real value of Binge On – so hopefully this letter will help make that clear again. . @EFF pic.twitter.com/pv6V4oOJwS — John Legere (@JohnLegere) January 7, 2016 T-Mobile’s CEO is dying to know who EFF is. Friends, please tweet at @JohnLegere with the hashtag #WeAreEFF to enlighten him. — EFF (@EFF) January 7, 2016 [Image credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Source: T-Mobile
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T-Mobile’s CEO does damage control, apologizes to the EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recaps two court cases pending in the U.S. which will decide whether you’re allowed to re-sell the things you purchase. The first case deals with items bought in other countries for resale in the U.S., such as textbooks. An unfavorable decision there would mean “anything that is made in a foreign country and contains copies of copyrighted material – from the textbooks at issue in the Kirtsaeng case to shampoo bottles with copyrighted labels – could be blocked from resale, lending, or gifting without the permission of the copyright owner. That would create a nightmare for consumers and businesses, upending used goods markets and undermining what it really means to ‘buy’ and ‘own’ physical goods. The ruling also creates a perverse incentive for U.S. businesses to move their manufacturing operations abroad. It is difficult for us to imagine this is the outcome Congress intended.” The second case is about whether music purchased on services like iTunes can be resold to other people. “Not only does big content deny that first sale doctrine applies to digital goods, but they are also trying to undermine the first sale rights we do have by forcing users to license items they would rather buy. The copyright industry wants you to “license” all your music, your movies, your games — and lose your rights to sell them or modify them as you see fit.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.